Monday, 22 August 2011

30 Days Goth Challenge - Day 1 - How did you come across the subculture?

I am secretly a dork with absolutely nothing to write about. I am also, less secretly, very fond of goth music and, y'know, familiar with the subculture. So I guess I'm a goth. Same way I'm also a postpunker. Or a random artsy chick. Or an atheist. Or any of the hundreds of other things I also am.

(I think people who try to defy all labels are silly. I plan on writing a post on this some time. Labeling is in my mind really only silly when people try to adjust their real selves to better fit a label. However, denying that you are part of something or that you have something in common with someone just so you can feel like a super special individual is pathetic. Of course there is no point in over-useing labels. But they're handy sometimes. We are all, however, many different things and only when combined can they even begin to reflect the true complexity of our natures.)

So, errr, I thought I'd combine these things somehow and answer Juliet's Lace's goth challenge. At least this means that I will write something in my damn blog.

I have the feeling my answers will be incredibly boring and overtly logical. Fret not though, I'm throwing in a gigantic outfit post soon.

Day 1 – How did you come across the subculture?Day 2 – Share photos and experiences from your Baby Bat days.Day 3 – When did you come out the Goth closet?Day 4 – Name a stereotype or cliche you can relate to.Day 5 – Is there a local Goth band or group in your area?Day 6 – Handwrite your favourite lyric and take a picture.Day 7 – Ten of your favourite goth bands.Day 8 – What's your worst and best experience with non-Goths?Day 9 – What genre of music do you dislike?Day 10 – What do you hate and love about the subculture?Day 11 – Is Goth a lifestyle for you?Day 12 – What's your gothic inspiration?Day 13 – What was your first band t-shirt?Day 14 – What was your best and worst DIY disaster.Day 15 – Your favourite or most expensive item in your wardrobe.Day 16 – What's the most casual you've ever dressed?Day 17 – Your favourite Goth brand.Day 18 – Worst hair experience.Day 19 – Share beauty advise and take a photo of your make up.Day 20 – If you could dye your hair any colour what would it be?Day 21 – What body mod do you have or have you considered?Day 22 – If you could attend any Goth event what would it be?Day 23 – Your favourite artist or photographer.Day 24 – Name the best websites for Goths.Day 25 – Did you ever consider leaving the subculture?Day 26 – Show a photo for every year (or month if you're new) that you've being into Goth.Day 27 – The worst thing you ever did to a newbie.Day 28 – Do you consider yourself an eldergoth?Day 29 – What do you think will happen to Goth in the future?Day 30 – Make a list of blogs you regularly read and link to them.

I grew up in a family that regularly played The Cure every time music was needed. I was doomed from the start, hehe. Not that I had any idea that any of The Cure's songs could be labeled "goth" when I was a kid, though.

I always had an odd sense of aesthetics growing up. Which led to me being fascinated with any- and everything that looked distorted, peculiar, torn, asymetric. I would look at people from all kinds of subcultures and think they looked marvelous. I decided to do research on some of them, and found out that quite a lot of them were very different in reality from how they were portrayed in the media. I wondered if this was the case with the goth subculture, which had always seemed rather cheesy and over-dramatic to 13-year-old me. So I looked into it, and, dear god, it was. However, at the time I had absolutely no intentions of ever becoming a goth myself. I was happy with being a vague, hard-to-define, artsy girl with a slightly "darker" outlook on life. (Gosh, this sounds incredibly silly, but I've always been sort of introspective and... fascinated with macabre things. Not in a typically goth way though. ;)) Plus, I did not take any interest in music anything other than appriciating more complex kinds as a violinist. Essentially, my interest in music at the time was technical and completly lacked passion.

Then, one day (I was 14-ish, I think), an old friend of my father decided to give our family this huge mixtape of doom (on a dvd) which had pretty much all the music he liked as a twenty-something on it. It contained a lot of electronic music, 80's pop stuff, some synthpop, new romantic, and to my surprise, lots of postpunk and a bit of goth. I listened to some random songs, then thought, "Hey, y'know, I sorta wonder what this goth music that everybody keeps nagging about sounds like?" So I put on Siouxsie and the Banshees'(who I had heard was one of those goth bands) "Spellbound" and fell in love. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. Needless to say, Siouxsie and the Banshees were my first music crush, and from that day on I sure had a passion for music. I kidnapped my dad's old record collection, decided I liked a few of the records, found out they were postpunk, and in one case (The Cure's "Pornography") goth. And after that I guess I just decided that this whole goth/postpunk-thing was for me. I didn't dress anything remotely close to a goth until I was 15, though, but I guess that goes in the next post?

My, oh, my. This is one lengthy meditiation on an, to anyone but me I suspect, incredibly dull subject.